Glass containers are considered potentially dangerous objects by stadi

Official Explanation:

The underlined portion of the sentence contains a plural verb, so check for subject-verb agreement errors. The underlined portion of the sentence also contains the idiom subject to, so check for idiom errors. The plural are agrees with containers. The idiom subject to, however, should be followed by a noun. Being confiscated is a verb form, so the sentence contains an idiom error. Eliminate choice A and look for any obvious repeaters. Choice B is an obvious repeater because it also follows subject to with the verb form being confiscated. Eliminate choice B. Now, evaluate the remaining answer choices individually looking for a reason to eliminate each.

Choice C corrects the original idiom error by replacing the verb form being confiscated with the noun confiscation but introduces a pronoun ambiguity error. The plural pronoun they could refer to containers or officials, so eliminate choice C. Choice D corrects the original idiom error by rephrasing the underlined portion of the sentence as may confiscate, but also introduces a pronoun ambiguity error. The plural pronoun they could refer to containers or officials, so eliminate choice D. Choice E corrects the original idiom error by rephrasing the underlined portion of the sentence as may…be confiscated and introduces no new errors, so keep choice E.

Choice A: No. Subject to being is unidiomatic. Idiom.

Choice B: No. Subject to being is unidiomatic. Idiom.

Choice C: No. The pronoun they has no clear referent. Pronoun ambiguity.

Choice D: No. The pronoun they has no clear referent. Pronoun ambiguity.

Choice E: Correct.

Glass containers are considered potentially dangerous objects by stadium officials and are therefore subject to being confiscated at the entrances to well-attended events in order to ensure crowd safety.

A. are therefore subject to being confiscated
Correct one, that keeps the parallelism and uses the right tense

B. therefore are subject to being confiscated
This is similar to A but breaks the parallelism "are X and are Y"

C. therefore they are subject to confiscation
Similar to B, it breaks the parallelism

D. they therefore may confiscate them to
This does not link well with the following part of the sentence

E. may therefore be confiscated
Break the parallelism

In my opion A, but I'm not sure

Glass containers are considered potentially dangerous objects by stadium officials and are therefore subject to being confiscated at the entrances to well-attended events in order to ensure crowd safety.


Meaning analysis: 1. Glass bottles are very dangerous objects. 2. Glass bottles therefore need to be confiscated at the entrance to well-attended places.

Error analysis: let's see sentence structure:


To me sentence correct as written. Because this is the only option that maintains //ism.
Therefore presents cause and effect in sentence. Cause: glass bottles are very dangerous objects. Effect: glass bottles need to be confiscated at the entrance to well-attended places. Both part of "and" starts with verbs "are" - fine.

A. are therefore subject to being confiscated

B. therefore are subject to being confiscated
(distorts initial //ism)

C. therefore they are subject to confiscation
(distorts initial //ism, "they" - makes this clause indended, but two IC is conneced with "and" no comma, hence "and" is in non-underlined part, this pronoun is wrong here, even if it unambuguesly refers to "glass containers", here between "subject to being confiscated" and "subject to confiscation" not much difference in meaning, both of them fine)

D. they therefore may confiscate them to
("they" distorts initial //ism as explained in (C), moreover "may" we don't need any probability here, everything is in simple presentence, this is the fact that glass containers considered dangerous, hece they subject to confiscation)

E. may therefore be confiscated
("may" distorts initial //ism as explained in (D) and wrong here)

A is the answer.

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But my concern is about the usage of "therefore" here in GMAT way.
I've googled and done some serach here in GC this one is the most interesting one--->
Per this explanation the usage of "therefore" in our 5 answer choices is correct according to the meaning, as it presents cause and effect, but I think wrong from grammar-punctuation stand point... (please read the link-->)

aragonn could you please explain more about "therefore" usage in GMAT?
thank you in advance!
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A. are therefore subject to being confiscated - use of being, might be or might not be correct. keep it on hold
B. therefore are subject to being confiscated - same as above
C. therefore they are subject to confiscation - they refers to glass containers or stadium officials?? wrong
D. they therefore may confiscate them to - same as above wrong
E. may therefore be confiscated - simple one, is in parallel with 'are considered' correct

I am unable to understand why Option(A) is incorrect.

(Can I assume that there could be some Glass containers that are allowed and some are not, hence options E)

GiuPao94 - please go through this link to know more on 'therefore'. Generally not very tested concept in GMAT, though.

https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions ... -therefore

delta23 - AS OE has explained, A has idiom error. Any perticular reason why you have selected A? and can not eliminate it ? For the answer of 2nd doubt - with the use of word 'potentially' , we can come to the conclusion you have mentioned above. So yes that is why E can be an answer.

daagh In option C there are two independent clauses, don't we need a comma before and?

Bishal123456789 There's no rule that we need a comma when joining two independent clauses with "and." It's often a mistake to do so. We really only need the comma when it adds clarity. In any case, since C is out for other reasons, we don't need to worry too much about it here.
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introducing may in the correct answer choice logically change the meaning of the sentence itself. i.e. The glass-containers might not be confiscated as well. I think option C is the best alternate. It uses an ambiguous pronoun but the pronoun logically refers to the correct antecedent. There shouldn't be an issue with that.

Here I feel "they" is referred to the glass containers as "stadium officials" cannot be subject to confiscation

Meaning of Confiscation:- the action of taking or seizing someone's property with authority

How can "stadium officials be confiscated" ?

Is there any other reason why C is wrong?
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GMATNinja, I thought the answer is A. Can u please explain why it is E?

DmitryFarber
Can you please explain this in detail.

The Official Explanation posted by aragonn provides some reasons to cut A-C, but they aren't very satisfying. While I think a real GMAT problem wouldn't rely on pronoun ambiguity to make C wrong (don't we really know the antecedent for "they"), it's also true that since there's no reason to cut the short, simple version (E), that's what we ought to choose. It's rather clunky to say something is "subject to being confiscated" when we can just say that it may be confiscated. We've often seen that "being" is a bad sign, and certainly "subject to confiscation" would match real-world usage better. This question could also be good training for those who use "changes the meaning" as an elimination criterion. The right answer doesn't have to say all the things that A says--we just want the meaning to be clear.

So, while we're talking about meaning, here's a more solid reason to cut all of A-C. Take a look at the modifier "in order to ensure crowd safety." This is an adverbial modifier, so what is being done to ensure crowd safety? The containers can't BE SUBJECT to confiscation in order to do something; containers have no agency. Clearly someone needs to be taking an action. That's where D-E come in. People are confiscating the containers in order to ensure crowd safety. D is no good--even if the odd "to" at the end is just a typo, the GMAT doesn't usually like to use the same kind of pronoun (here, "they" and "them") to refer to different things. (This is NOT a real-world rule. It only makes sense in the restricted, single-sentence world of Sentence Correction.) That leaves E as the only choice standing.
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Could you explain why "May therefore be confiscated" is parallel to "are considered".

Hi. While I understood the reasoning behind cutting options A to C could you please explain how option E maintains parallelism?

"are considered" and "be confiscated" are the two parallel entities.
DmitryFarber
Please validate.

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